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How to Make It in Europe

In 'The Portrait of a Lady,' an American woman bent on self-determination collides with the Old World

By

Colm Tóibín

Updated Aug. 24, 2012 4:44 p.m. ET

In February 1884, Henry James, having crossed from London to Paris, asked a friend to arrange a meeting with the French novelist Alphonse Daudet. Daudet invited him to tea at his apartment and also invited Emile Zola and Edmond de Goncourt. The French writers were amazed; they had known James almost 10 years before when he was a young man in Paris, but they had never connected the face they knew with the figure who had become the novelist.

Uniquely among English-language writers of his age, James had immersed himself in the...